Crawley has a longer record with group-buying solar than most towns its size, and that record is worth reading before you register for anything — or before you dismiss it. Here is what the scheme delivered, what has changed, and how to use it without being sold the wrong system.
What Solar Together Sussex delivered
Crawley Borough Council has repeatedly been a named partner in Solar Together Sussex, the group-buying scheme run with West Sussex County Council and the independent specialist iChoosr. More than 1,700 systems were installed across the first two Sussex rounds, and the scheme returned in 2023 with a new strand: registration for battery retrofits on homes that already had solar.
The mechanism is the same everywhere it runs. Residents register their roof details free and without commitment; installers bid for the pooled registrations; and registrants receive a personal offer based on the winning bid. The pool is what produces the price — which is also why the price is set for the pool, not for your roof.
What has changed
The scheme has rebranded as Switch Together. Our Crawley page had said, when we last reviewed it in July, that no 2026 Sussex round was confirmed, and the operator’s own page bears that out: when we checked on 17 September 2026, its Crawley solar page said it was not active in the area yet and invited residents to leave their details to hear when it opens. Round dates move, so check the operator’s page for the current position before you plan around it.
Group-buy or quote? Both
When a round opens, a Switch Together offer is a real offer, and it is not a scam. The honest way to use it is as one of two quotes. Get an installer quote for exactly the same specification — panel count and wattage, inverter make and size, battery capacity, warranty terms, scaffolding, and who submits the G98 or G99 notification to UK Power Networks, which runs Crawley’s network under its South Eastern licence — and compare the totals. Residential installations carry 0% VAT until 31 March 2027 whichever route you choose, reverting to 5% after, so VAT does not separate them.
The Energy Saving Trust’s national anchor is a useful sanity check on either number: a typical domestic system of about 4.5 kWp — around twelve panels — costs about £7,600 installed (their figure, updated 27 August 2026). If a quote is far from that in either direction, ask why. We are glad to be the second quote, and we will price the identical specification.
Why Crawley suits a pooled scheme — and where it doesn’t
Crawley was designated a New Town on 9 January 1947 and built out in planned neighbourhoods, from the original nine to fourteen today. Whole streets share roof shapes and orientations, so a survey on one house tells you a great deal about the rest of the row — which is exactly the kind of housing a pooled scheme prices well.
The limits are the building type rather than the scheme. At the 2021 Census, 37.4% of Crawley’s 45,500 households lived in terraced houses, 22.7% in semis and only 14.2% in detached homes, and a mid-terrace roof holds fewer panels than a semi, so a realistic system for many Crawley homes is smaller than the twelve-panel average. A quarter of homes — 25.1% — are flats or maisonettes, where the roof is usually not yours to alter without the freeholder’s consent. Those are survey facts, not scheme facts, and any offer, group or otherwise, should be read against them.
Our solar panels Crawley page publishes a generation estimate for the town itself, run in the European Commission’s PVGIS 5.3 tool with the parameters shown — about 4,020 kWh a year for a 4 kWp array, roughly 1,005 kWh per kWp — and the savings calculator lets you test your own usage against it. The Met Office record for Charlwood, the climate station used for Crawley, averaged 1,628 hours of sunshine a year over 1991–2020, which is consistent with that estimate.
The same Sussex scheme has covered Horsham district next door, where Switch Together’s solar page gave the same ‘not active in your area yet’ message on 17 September 2026. Our solar panels Horsham page sets its own PVGIS estimate — about 4,099 kWh a year for the same 4 kWp array — against the district’s conservation areas and its historic Horsham Stone roofs.
The council’s wider direction
Crawley Borough Council declared a climate emergency on 17 July 2019, voted unanimously in December 2021 to bring its net-zero target forward from 2050 to 2040, and in December 2024 passed a new climate and nature emergency declaration — net zero for the council’s own emissions by 2030 and borough-wide by 2045. The delivery is visible: the council reports a 350 kW solar carport at K2 Leisure Centre producing “clean, lower cost electricity”, and support for Re-Energise Manor Royal, a project helping businesses put solar on their roofs. All of that is the council’s work, reported from its own pages — not ours. Our part is the honest survey of your roof, and a quote on the same specification as whatever else is on your table.
Sources: Crawley Borough Council — news releases on Solar Together Sussex (2021 and 2023), Reducing our emissions, and climate emergency pages; Switch Together, Crawley and Horsham solar panels pages (read 17 September 2026); ONS Census 2021 (TS044, TS054); Met Office 1991–2020 averages for Charlwood; Energy Saving Trust, Solar panels: costs, savings and benefits explained (updated 27 August 2026); HMRC VAT Notice 708/6; European Commission JRC, PVGIS 5.3 (run 16 September 2026); UK Power Networks.